Flash based enterprise storage systems, also referred to herein as content addressable storage system (such as Xtrem10), support a rich set of advanced data services such as single data instance, compression, snapshots, thin provisioning and the like. These systems are able to achieve the advanced data services by decoupling storage access, logical volume address space, and physical on-disk location of data. Conventional storage systems may use metadata journals to preserve the consistency of a system. In the case of system failure and reboot, the persisted journal could be used to recover the system. However, if for some reason the journal fails to persist, the system needs to be recovered via more traditional approaches, such as restoring from one or more backups, or manually fixing the on-disk metadata configuration and data. Those approaches require taking the system offline for a prolonged period of time, expertise on disk data/Metadata layout and content, or both. Even so, there is no guarantee that the system can be recovered if the configuration has changed or been lost, or if the metadata failed to persist on-disk.